It Is The Future, The Year 2001: An HD Startopia Gallery

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Hello, faithful word-consumer. Would you care to also consume images this day? I have been replaying post-Bullfrog outfit Mucky Foot’s wonderful 2001 management game Startopia, which recently saw a re-release on Steam (as well as having been on GoG for some time prior to that). It took a bit of fiddling, but I managed to get it running at 2560×1440 with a ton of anti-aliasing and, well, my God. It’s absolutely beautiful to behold despite its 12 year vintage. Partly that’s down to judiciously characterfully artwork and a strong sense of scale, partly it’s because the game has an uncommonly liberated camera, able to go pretty much anywhere. I’m no Dead End Thrills, in a great many ways, but I’ve rounded up a collection of screenshots which somewhat demonstate how breathtaking this game is at high resolution. I really do think you should take a look.

Particularly striking is the view from the bio-deck, from where the camera is able to leave the space station and gaze upon its marvellously detailed exterior, hanging like a battered jewel in a silent, colossal starfield. I could sit watching it for hours. Have done, in fact.

Take a look. You’re very much best off fullscreening this.

I had a mad moment earlier where I seriously considered bankrupting myself with a 4K monitor, purely to see Startopia looking even more dramatic. It is worth nothing that the in-game text is so tiny as to be problematic at 1440p, however, but a bit of squinting is well worth the visual majesty.

If you’re planning on doing similar yourself, you will need the widescreen mod else the game will stretch or crop. You’ll also need to force on anti-aliasing and anistropic filtering in your graphics card drivers. You may get display errors and crashes alas, Startopia’s somewhat temperamental on Windows 7&8, though I seem to have made it stable here for now.

I’ll be bringing you words on how Startopia plays, by today’s standards, in a few days. Hint: it is lovely in almost every conceivable way.

It wouldn’t be very surprising if GOG has done some fiddling to get it to work better on modern PCs. That is pretty much what they do.

That’s why I wouldn’t buy any of those newly re-released older games on Steam. Steam has never properly supported older games and all of them are also available on GOG where they’re tweaked to function properly in Windows 7.

Like I said with the Square Enix Collective announcement, this is the most cherry IP out of those likely to be offered. I don’t suppose the question is will there be a Startopia 2, but who will get to make it.

Argh! Why? I mean why?!? the people who even remember dungeon keeper are not the kinda that like micro transactions! *stomps off* … … … *comes back* Anyways startopia was and is one of my all time favourites. Its Theme hospital, in space, written by Douglas Adams.

I would love to see another game in this vein (or indeed, make one myself), but to my mind there can never be another true Startopia, only because William Franklyn, who played both your charming AI companion VAL, and greasy wheeler-and-dealer Aarona Daal, is sadly deceased. Those two characters lent such a perfect atmosphere and dry humor to the game, and I think it would’ve been a little lonely managing that great big space-donut without them by your side.

No mention of the amazing 1.02 experimental patch that adds dynamic shadows to the game? Written by one of the developers? It works wonders and our current graphics cards are crazy insane enough powerful to make them work

Sorry if I’m being thick, but I’m not really seeing an issue here. I installed the 1.02 patch only, (couldn’t even see the download link for the widescreen patch), and in the options I was able to set a resolution of 1680×1050 without adding any other mods. What am I missing?

I replayed this earlier this year on Win8 – ran unpatched, out of the box in its own native 900p. Ah, games on CD – it was the future don’t you know.

Oh, and the awful combat still let’s the game down. Sandbox mode though, is just wonderful. Until those things from the Dark Crystal turn up and everything goes pear shaped in a massacre of poor little aliens and burning med-bays. The Horror!

Yeah, combat sucks. The game could be substantially improved if there had been a research tree to upgrade combat performance, but keeping enemy AI the same. It would have sped things up considerably while keeping the real challenge–making an otherwise functional station–intact.

And there are some tricks to keeping the monsters at bay. Make sure you place trash bins and security turrets where possible, especially near dispensers and shops. The bins will help keep trash in check, which will keep the larval forms from multiplying (they eat garbage), while the turrets auto-kill the larval forms and will make a big difference if an adult goes on a rampage. Placing turrets around stardocks is a useful way to take out both the larva and spies, though obviously it’s very difficult to justify turrets early on and space becomes a premium rather quickly.

It’s not a terrible idea; the game is never as combat focused as Dungeon Keeper and succeeding in combat doesn’t require a massive shift in production like in Anno, but it lacks depth or really any control.

There’s a campaign mission where you compete with other managers but can’t fight, and each person has to pay 2000e every 15 minutes or so per occupied segment. It’s a last-man standing economic fight, and it’s a structure that serves the game extremely well. I would have liked to see it fleshed out more and added as an option for sandbox mode, with more ways to upset the balance than “invade and conquer.” And yes, I know about spies and assassins, but that’s a very indirect method that’s hard to measure.

I can never quite remember the order. I thought combat was introduced prior to the Gem Slug mission (where you have to pay the fees), which was followed by the lengthy, difficult final mission for the Sirens.

If you’ve never beaten the game, there is a cheat code. The final credits were lavished with the same love the rest of the game received and are worth seeing.

Whenever you’re hiring aliens that can also join combat (everyone except the sirens, monks, gardeners, and scientists), prioritize those with high loyalty, unless it’s a grey with very low skill, because they can make people sick. Loyalty affects their willingness to fight. Start working toward having a line or two of turrets along your borders as soon as possible, research plans for security scuzzers early, and in combat focus on getting a droid to the section lock and claiming it.

I wouldn’t call Startopia’s combat broken, it’s just not that interesting. Once you realize it’s about spamming troops rather than strategy it’s something you can move past fairly quickly.

Same here. I think it’s the second to last one, and it required more combat than all of the other missions so far, and after a few tries, I just couldn’t be bothered. I still start up Startopia every once and while, and though most of the other missions were fairly enjoyable, now I just jump straight to the sandbox.

Coincidentally, I have been playing Startopia myself recently. It remains a truly splendid game, of a genre which seems to have fallen sadly out of favour. It and Evil Genius (a game notable mainly for how much better it could have been) have been scratching my management itch this month.

That’s a good question. Last LAN party I was at, quite some time ago obviously, we were able to play Startopia, but if anyone hit the Escape key it would crash the game for everyone. I think it would crash after an hour or two anyway, though, and there was no apparent way to resume.

I’d imagine they would get around this by just not marketing it as a multiplayer game, but now I look at the store page and out of its six touted features multiplayer with up to three other players is listed. Now if they haven’t touched the code that would be rather crap. The graphics are fine, the audio is lovely, the gameplay holds up, but by today’s standards the multiplay was, and still may be, broken.

Though at least with the multiplayer being dated, we did only need my one CD to play. Without that I never would have been able to share the game with my friends who were born in the late 80’s, early 90’s and missed this one first time round.

Administrator, the Zedem Monks are complaining about your excessive screenshot-taking. They say if you persist in trying to capture their souls they will be forced to, and I quote, “get disharmonious on your karma”. Personally I wouldn’t pay any mind, but that may be because my pointless superstition module is malfunctioning and therefore I don’t believe in karma.

I don’t see Startopia on Steam, must be regional restrictions. On Gog I do not see HD being mentioned. Is this “HD Startopia’ in the title something new in the Steam release, or is it just the old gog version with the widescreen patch?

you can use the always useful google cache to see the US steam page (Startopia is indeed region restricted on Steam, go figure) : link to webcache.googleusercontent.com
No mention of any modification ..